Atalaya Magdalena

Atalaya Magdalena (she/her), class of 2025, is majoring in Studio Art in the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts with a second major in American Culture Studies in the College of Arts & Sciences. For the Atkin Residency, Atalaya will explore themes of food and democracy through food shares, participatory mobile murals, and documentary film. 

“In my artwork, I understand the human body to be the site in which the social occurs, reproduces, and changes. Bodies are geographically located, and arranged into social relationships, by history. History is written to consolidate the living movement of bodies into nations and periods…. 

On this continent, the process of colonization, immigration, and nationhood have all been premised on mass movements of people. Some voluntary and some coerced. What does democracy look like as a physical, social behavior? What are the sensory dimensions of democracy?”